In a couple of weeks, we’ll know who the best basketball team in the National Basketball Association is.
It will be either the Cleveland Cavaliers or the Golden State Warriors.
Those two teams are now battling it out in the finals of the playoffs. This is the third straight year the NBA playoffs have come down to these two teams. Last year, Cleveland won and the year before, Golden State won.
Tag: basketball
NBA Takes A Stand Against Racism
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has made a strong statement against racism.
Yesterday, they banned the owner of the LA Clippers basketball team from basketball for the rest of his life. They also said he has to pay a fine of $2.5 million.
Raptors Headed To Playoffs
Canada’s only basketball team in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Toronto Raptors, are generating some excitement.
For the first time in six long years they have made the playoffs.
Of the 30 teams in the NBA, only 16 make it to the playoffs. There will be eight teams from the Eastern Conference and eight teams from the Western Conference. The Raptors play in the East.
In the playoffs, each team competes in a best-of-seven series. The first team to win four games moves on to the next round. A team has to win three rounds to make it to the finals. Then, the lone surviving team from the East plays the lone surviving team from the West.
Raptor Mascot Out For The Season
One of the most important members of the Toronto Raptors basketball team is injured and won’t be participating this season.
It’s the “Raptor,” the team’s mascot.
Many people think the Raptor–with his athletic moves, edgy attitude and fun-loving spirit–is one of the best mascots in the NBA. Perhaps even professional sports.
He tore his Achilles tendon during a school visit in Halifax before the basketball season started.
People have an emotional reaction to the Raptor mascot–whoever he/she is.
The coach’s daughter cried when she heard the news of his/her injury.
Basketball Player Jason Collins First To Openly Announce He Is Gay
Jason Collins is a basketball player who played for the Celtics and the Wizards this year.
He’s 34 years old, and he is seven feet tall and weighs 255 pounds.
He is charismatic, intelligent and well educated.
On the court, he is a tough, physical player.
All of those facts describe Collins.
But there is one fact about him that he revealed in Sports Illustrated magazine this week, that relatively few people knew.
Collins is gay.
He is the first male professional athlete, who is still playing a major North American sport, to openly announce that that he is gay.
Andrew Wiggins Awarded Naismith Trophy For High School Basketball
The top high school basketball player in the United States is a Canadian.
This week Andrew Wiggins was awarded the Naismith Trophy and named the Boys’ High School Player of the Year.
Wiggins was born in Vaughan, Ont. and is playing for Huntington Prep School in West Virginia.
Wiggins is 18 years old. His average per game is 23.6 points and 11.7 rebounds.
He hasn’t yet decided where he will go to university; many schools are competing for him.
The Naismith award winner is chosen by basketball journalists in the U.S.
Steve Nash’s Outstanding Basketball Career
It is often said that a sign of greatness is making others around you better. If that’s the case, then there can be very few better than Canadian basketball player Steve Nash.
Nash is a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award in the National Basketball Association: for the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 seasons.
Nash recently achieved another significant milestone in his career.
He surpassed the 10,000 career assists mark.
Toronto Raptors Basketball Team Has A New Line-Up
The 2012/2013 National Basketball Association season is officially underway.
There are 30 teams vying for the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, including Canada’s only professional basketball team, the Toronto Raptors.
The Raptors have a new-look team this season.
Three of the five Raptors’s starters this year weren’t with the team last year.
The Raptors’s starting lineup includes two players who have been on the team before: DeMar DeRozen and Andrea Bargnani.
The Raptors believe in DeRozen as a player.
They recently signed him to a four-year, $40-million contract extension.
Gloomy Underpass Transformed Into Awesome Kids’ Park
An “underpass” is a road or a tunnel that goes beneath another road. Toronto has some dark and gloomy underpasses.
Dark and gloomy, that is, until this summer.
That’s when an organization called Waterfront Toronto built something incredible.
Where there used to be garbage and weeds, there is now a fun playground with a safe, rubbery floor, a skateboard and scooter park and a basketball court.
There are also swings, climbers, a teeter-totter and benches for people to relax on.
Underpass Park covers 2.5 acres underneath three on- and off-ramps that lead to the DVP in East Toronto.
Before the park was built, Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford said he wasn’t sure the space could be transformed.
But when he came to open the park on Aug. 2, he loved it.
A Great Time To Be A Sports Fan
There are exciting things happening in baseball, hockey, basketball, golf and soccer.
Major League Baseball (MLB) is just getting underway.
Every team is hoping to make it to the World Series in October.
But that’s about 150 games away.
The Blue Jays have a real shot at it this year, and that has some of the American teams nervous.
Will a Canadian team win against the Americans in “their” sport?
It’s happened before—in 1992 and 1993 when the Jays won the World Series. You never know!
